son or daughter is a person with certain recognized rights and duties
in law—a legal status. Only the qualifications for that status are bio-
logical. Adoption is a legal fiction that creates the same legal status
for persons who lack the biological qualification. The essential qual-
ity of adoption in the ancient Near East is that it did not merely
create filiation, called “sonship” or “daughtership” in the native ter-
minology; it created legitimatesonship or daughtership.
The ancient law of property, inheritance, and contract contained
certain limitations in the assignment of rights and duties. Legitimate
filiation was a conduit for such rights and duties. Adoption was there-
fore used as a mode of transferring rights and duties, employing fam-
ily law to circumvent limitations in other legal spheres. It could be
used within a family, where gaps had appeared in its biological struc-
ture, to restore it in law to an integral unity of persons and prop-
erty. It could be used beyond the family, to negotiate arrangements
of mutual benefit between strangers, since adoption was not confined
to children. The more the benefits incidental to filiation became the
essence of the relationship between adopter and adoptee, the more
the family relationship was reduced to a mere fiction. In its most
extreme commercial forms, adoption became a legal fiction upon a
legal fiction.5.3.1.1 From the point of view of the adopter, adoption brought
two principal benefits. Firstly, it enabled a childless person to main-
tain the family line. Secondly, it ensured care and support in one’s
old age, which was a fundamental filial duty. Not only the childless
took advantage of this benefit; it might be more convenient to impose
this duty on someone adopted expressly for the purpose than on
one’s own children.5.3.1.2 The principal benefit for the adoptee was the right to inherit
the adopter’s estate, since adoption gave the status of legitimate heir.
More than this, it was the only way to acquire such a right. Inheritance
law knew nothing of bequests to outsiders; to inherit a share of the
estate, even under a testament, the beneficiary had to be entitled
already under the rules of intestate succession, which normally meant
being a member of the testator’s immediate family. Anyone else wish-
ing to receive an inheritance share had first to become a member
of the family, by adoption. 51
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